The present invention relates to a method for separating and collecting iodine from the liquid phase as well as to the utilization of same.
It is known in inorganic chemistry that iodine mixed with pure neutral iodate is used, in solution, for the quantitative analysis of acids. The acidification of iodide or iodate solutions alone, however, is not sufficient to release iodine. It is also known that free iodine can easily be adsorbed at activated carbon.
A number of processes are known for collecting iodine, such as, for example, the adsorption process which employs activated carbon, silver charged activated carbon or other, preferably silver charged sorbents (e.g. K. Lieser and W. Hild, "Separation of Iodine from Fission Product Solutions with Silver Chloride on Silica Gel", Radiochimica Acta 7 (1967) 74-77). Still other processes for collecting iodine are the process which employs ion exchangers, the precipitation and coprecipitation processes, and the extraction process. Most of these processes cover only certain chemical forms of iodine, such as, for example, the process in which there is a fixation of iodide at silver chloride. Moreover, some of them have limited reaction rates, such as, for example, the ion exchange process, or they permit treatment of volumes of water only in batches, such as, for example, the precipitation processes.